Albert Sánchez Piñol

The extraordinary meeting of the European explorers and the pygmies as never before recounted.  

It is difficult to find a human group more different in terms of physique and cultural mores than the inhabitants of the African jungle, improperly labelled as “pygmies”. Far-removed from us and from everyone.

Homer mentions them in the Iliad and his verses are the source of one of the most ridiculous and persistent misunderstandings in scientific history. Who were those pygmies who defended themselves with spears against the attacks of cranes? The answer is very simple: creatures as fabulous as our goblins. But Homer was already a classic in ancient Greece and if he said that the pygmies were real, it means that they were. So what is the connection between the inhabitants of the African jungle and the Greek pygmies? There isn’t one.

It looked as if the myth had been debunked with the advent of rationalism, but against all odds and driven by science, literature and fantasy, many adventurers and explorers have gone in search of the pygmies in the heart of Africa since the beginning of 19th century. Les tenebres del cor (The Darkness of the Heart) narrates their encounters with a people about whom the only thing we know is that we know nothing. And we will reveal just one surprising detail: the true characters in this book – the extravagant and seductive Paul

Du Chaillu, the arrogant German botanist Georg Schweinfurth, the unjustly forgotten ethnographer Paul Schebesta, the painter Anne Eisner and her husband Patrick Putnam, the anthropologist Colin Turnbull, and Albert Sánchez Piñol himself – went to look for something very important to them among the “pygmies”, and they all found what they were looking for. But what a terrible paradox: what they found does not exist!

“Sánchez Piñol’s originality lies in his themes and excellently structured plot.”—The Independent

“Sánchez Piñol is taking giant steps towards towards becoming the most read Catalan writer of all time."—El Periódico